Special Days for Reflection

tender words

The disease showed no mercy, with no let-up even as it entered its second year. Still, the letters showed George and Marian as resolute in believing things would work out, and their professions of love never wavered. Special days seemed to inspire them to reflect on their lives and their bonds, as we see in the next two letters.
 

"Just think - our home has been broken up over a third of our three years of married life. You have been an awfully good hubby with all your troubles and worries, and I love you for it.
Oh, dear, if I could only get well enough to do something. This isn't much like the life together that we hoped for when we married, is it? But perhaps that is coming later. I hope God is going to let us both live long enough to do something fine - together - write a novel or something like that I mean. Of course we have had lots of lovely time together already, and if I didn't live another week, I'd be glad and happy for the three beautiful years of life as your wife. And there's our little James - if we don't live to do anything else, we've brought into the world a fine, healthy boy, who is going to develop into a good, true, healthy man, who, like his father, will, we hope, try to make the world a little better by living an honest, independent, unselfish life, and telling people the 'Truth' through the press. (James is going to be a newspaper man, isn't he.)
Then our great love for each other, which has never faltered, but grown greater through the years, makes up for all the disappointments and worries and sickness, doesn't it darling?
Oh, dearest, I want to get well, to have a long, happy, useful life with you. Take care of yourself, so that if I do get well, we can have a happy healthy life together - with our son. Let us try to live up to our ideals of true manhood and womanhood for the sake of our James.
With everlasting love, I am your adoring wife.
Marion"
 
George's turn at reflection had come on Valentine's Day (apparently 1911).
 
"My beloved Marion:- For many years now I have written you love letters and I never tire of it. I have written a goodly number of valentine messages too, so today I come to the pleasant task with no new phrases to spring to catch your ear, no new words in which to clothe my ideas, and no new sentences to tell my love. It is the old story told in the old way, now. But, as the years go and the experiences of married life come and pass and others follow, there is no doubt but that our love changes too. It deepens as we see the depths of love in one another. I grows more fervent as we find how unswerving is the love in the heart of the one we adore. So I know that my love for you, and your love for me, has ripened into full bloom and will live forever and a day.
I think it was Robert Ingersoll, your favorite author, who perhaps was the most misunderstood man of his day, who said that life is a journey which we make between the barren peaks of two eternities- and he somewhere else talked about the hills of joy we scale, the valleys of tears we must cross, the rivers of despair to be forded, and the hard uphill marches that we must make. We must not expect to be exempt from the rough places in life, love, just because we have one another to help us on our way, or because we have a great and abiding love to render us more light hearted. There are hills that love cannot level, and rivers of sorrow that love cannot quench. We must climb hand in hand, and ford the streams with words of encouragement to one another but never letting up in our own exertions to reach the higher and brighter uplands.
We are in a valley now, we are having to ford a rough and swollen stream. It is hard, very hard, on the little mother with all her love and desire to do everything for the first and only little baby. It is hard for her to be separated from her hubby whose love she prizes so much, and whom she knows loves her better than anyone else in the world, and it is hard to go through the rigorous work of

Jim, Dec 1912
doing almost nothing when so many thingsstand waiting for her which she longs to do. It is all very, very, hard and nobody knows it better than Marion's lover. But he cannot help it. Life cannot be altered for those we love by our hands. Fate is inexorable and so all that Georgie can do is to try to help his sweetheart to face the struggle unafraid- face the work, the fight, and the hard, hard, task of getting well, with fortitude and bravery which do so much toward making the victory come sooner.
A man doesnt know how to help a woman bear those things sometimes. Often times I know, I go about helping you the wrong way and make matters worse by not seeming to sympathise with you. My heart is tender and aches for you, Marion dear, but if I kept telling you so you would not be helped, perhaps so much, as if I try to make light of the troubles that I realize only too well (and then perhaps my opinion on this is all wrong). It seems however that the best way is to make as light of them as possible and to look always ahead to the clear days and sunshine beyond on the pathway to which our feet are set. After all, dearest, it will not be long now.
The bright, sunny, days coming will put you ahead a great deal for we know this is the very worst season of the year for a trouble like yours, so much dampness, fog, rain, and unpleasantness.
If our love is as deep as it should be, and we know it is, it certainly has strength to carry us over these trying times. When I feel downhearted a bit, I think of your lovely eyes which I fondly gaze upon even in my dreams and there I see the pure, sweet, patient soul, beneath, and it gives me lots of courage for more of the hardship and trouble.
When you feel anxious to get well quickly, remember that perhaps you are expecting a little too much in the way of a quick rally and rapid recovery, and think of the boy whose only joy in life is your love and wellfare, and remember that he wants you to be calm, quiet, and patient in these last days of your ordeal, just as you were during the days and months that have passed. You have been so wonderfully good, Marion dear, that I know you will continue so until you are well mended and have no more need of the fortitude which you have showed to be a part of your very nature. Everyone knows how brave, loving, devoted, and how patient you have been and everyone wants you to have strength and fortitude enough to last over until you are so near well that you wont need it anymore.
I think of you are great, great, deal of the time. I am thinking also of our happy days to come when we get our home reestablished and have one another every day, and have our little Jim all the time to teach, to love, and to watch grow up into a big strong, clean, and great hearted man. He needs lots of care now, but, darling, he needs a mother (in the real sense of the word) not one thousandth as much as he will after he is two years old and every day from then on.
Darling, I must close now, sending you Valentine greetings and the world of love that is in my heart, pledging you anew. I know that you are going to see a steady improvement, if not as rapid a one as you had expected. Just have a good, happy, valentine day thinking over the joys I rehersed to you Sunday since our childhood love first made itself manifest until today, and then remembering that it is to go on and on forever, feel the happiness in that knowledge.

 
The story continues here. Here is the previous page.

References

Source material for the above

  • Letters handed down to James Gorham Armstead

Powered by Blogger